And the people spoke against God and against Moses: For spoke against, see 12.1. This clause expresses a verbal rebellion.

Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?: This is a rhetorical question. It implies that God and Moses should not have led the Israelites out of Egypt to die in the desert (compare 20.5). The people are angry that they have been treated badly. Their anger should be reflected somehow in the translation. The Hebrew pronoun for you is plural, referring to God and Moses. The Hebrew verb rendered have … brought … up is the same one translated “have … made … come up” in 20.5, so it would be helpful to render them in the same way to show the connection between these two verses. For the Hebrew word rendered wilderness (midbar), see 1.1.

For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food: Here the Israelites exaggerate by saying there is no food to eat or water to drink, and then they complain about the quality of their food (compare 20.5). The Hebrew particle ki rendered For is an emphatic marker that emphasizes the people’s complaint. New International Version expresses it well by using exclamation marks here. Both times the Hebrew word for food is literally “bread.” The first time food refers to food in general, like they had in Egypt, but the second time it may be a disguised reference to manna. We loathe this worthless food is literally “our very self is disgusted with the worthless food” (similarly Alter’s alternative in a footnote), which is a clear expression of disgust and disdain. By complaining about the food that the LORD was graciously providing for them, the people were in fact complaining about God himself. New Century Version provides a helpful model for this clause, saying “we hate this terrible food!”

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .